Jo Mitchell: The Feel of Color

Jan 08, 2019 01:33PM
● By Tracy McCoy

Jo Mitchell [5 Images]
Click Any Image To Expand

Electric. The intensity in paintings by Jo Mitchell is electric. You
may find they knock you off balance – the color, the movement and
the complexity of abstract expressionism – if so, you’re not
alone. But it may surprise you to find out these images are deeply
personal. Get ready. Let go of the “inspired” landscapes and
“touching” creations you normally think of as art to consider
things from her point of view.

Jo spent years writing for several newspapers in the New England
area. She worked as a columnist, a correspondent, a staff writer and
investigative reporter. When asked about her career, Jo said, “At
the time, I was thinking of it as an exciting and purposeful means of
supporting two kids. It was intense and difficult, but I learned a
lot about the nature of people.”

Her emotional reactions, though, throughout her career, both as a
journalist and later as victims’ advocate for the courts, belonged
in the back seat. Her job was to be clear, objective. It required
stripping the “personal” from the picture.

Eventually, her chance came to get “in touch” with things
herself. She puts that out there, now. “This is what I feel as I
paint: how some colors feel comfortable together and a subtle
blending makes me smile; how others vie for the same space and yell
at me because I make them sit side by side. What stays with me is
insistence upon integrity and a willingness to search inside myself
for artistic truths.” Her colors are characters, part of life’s
drama.

As a reporter, a victim’s advocate, and artist, integrity and truth
have remained central to her work. In this age of disputes about the
truth, it’s something to consider.

She describes the difference between abstract expressionism and
representational art in this way: “Traditional painters paint what
they see. Or their subjective version of what they see. And I try to
paint (pause) an essence. Not how something looks, but how I feel
about what it is. So, if I have something called Volcano, it doesn’t
look like any volcano, but it feels that way – with the energy and
the color, that it is volcanic.”

Jo’s paintings, conceived as they are from the inside, fit into the
world of interpretations and ideas. They grasp conflict and turmoil.
They free us to wrestle, too. Again, her past work created an
objective synopsis that respected the truth, that worked to find it;
she put it out there for the public. And her work now is about
reflection, imagination and expression from her gut, her intellect.

Look at the world today – our world – and then think back to the
world she was covering in the 70’s and 80’s. I can’t help but
wonder how Jo is processing the “fact” controversies that
surround us now. Increasingly, “news” is a mask, a cover, for
ideology. Where is the balance—where is the truth? (My opinion:
It’s there. We just have to look harder to find it.)

Her painting, Chaos, is, well, chaos. Collision, is, well—BOOM—a
collision. Collateral damage…. You get the picture. The titles are
clues to internalize events. The Quinlin Visual Arts Center in
Gainesville will hold a show of Jo’s work from April 11th
to June 1 in the Green Street Gallery. Her website is
expressions-by-jo.com.